Posted: Tue 18 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Geeky, General, Own Business, Travel, Work-related |
At the moment, I’m doing a lot of work on my laptop – the new workplace didn’t have a spare PC, so I’m using my laptop as a work machine on a daily basis. (I use it as a work machine when I’m working from home anyway, but there I still have the option of using the main desktop PC too. It depends more on where I want to sit/work, really)
Anyway because of that, and also because of some of the work I’m doing, it’s a lot easier to do it using a mouse, instead of the laptop’s touchpad. Yes, I can use the touchpad still but well, a mouse is easier.
So I’ve ended up buying a little portable optical micromouse thing , and it’s marvellous. I tend to just leave it in the office at the moment, but I’m truly impressed with how easy (and comfortable) it is to use on a regular basis. I particularly like the way that the receiver stick can be stowed inside the mouse body when it’s not being used, and also the retractable USB-to-miniUSB cable for charging the damn thing – that’s going to get used in a variety of other roles as well, believe me.
All told, very very impressed with the entire thing. And it does make desk-based laptop life a whole hell of a lot.
Posted: Sun 16 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Photography, Work-related |
It’s now two and a half years since I got my Canon EOS20D, and in that time the sensor had become disgusting.
So before we went to the Lake District, I invested in a tool to clean the sensor, the Visible Dust ‘Arctic Butterfly 724’ – stupid name, but decent product. It’s just a small(ish) brush that creates its own anti-static charge in order to pick up as much dust as possible, but it came highly recommended by a number of sources, so that’s what I went with.
And so far it seems to have done a good job on the sensor. A couple of swipes and it’s clean, with no more dust specks on any images. Plus, of course, now I’ve got the kit I’ll be able to clean it before it gets disgusting again.
Posted: Wed 12 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: D4D™, Domestic, Own Business, Travel, Work-related |
It’s not long now ’til we go off to the Lake District. In fact, we go off on Friday morning for a week – which will bring us neatly to Easter, so I’m actually not working from this Friday the 14th to Tuesday the 25th. Not a bad break, all told.
It does mean that this week is bloody manic, with normal work plus stuff for my own clients, and trying to get a dollop of work completed for them before I go off. (Which is going pretty well, and I’m sure getting through the list – but it does make for some seriously long days) I’m enjoying the work, and I’m sure it’ll make me appreciate the holiday even more.
We haven’t got much planned for while we’re away – in fact, the weather up where we’re going looks like it’s going to be bloody wet which I don’t mind – but at least it’s not looking to be as windy as it is here at the moment. It’ll mean some proper time out (although I do intend to be putting in place some more stuff for the foundations of the new business and so on) which really is much needed.
Oh, and yes, I’ve also been writing some extra posts that’ll go up here while we’re away. I’m still sad like that.
Posted: Wed 5 March, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Own Business, Thoughts, Work-related |
When we’re away in a couple of weeks’ time, I’m going to be doing some work – or rather, some work on my work. In other words, I plan to spend some of the time looking at business plans, thinking about what needs to be done, writing some letters, and jotting out some to-do lists.
It’s something that needs to be done, so that once we come back I can really make a start on doing some of this stuff. And while I’ve said to Herself already that I won’t be doing work per se, she knows that some of these foundations need to be created and figured out – and while we’re away for a week it’s as good a time as any to do it. Plus, of course, I won’t have any distractions of things like normal internet access, norking about on other sites, and the like.
So it all makes sense to get some of the bits done then. It just sort of detracts from the entire “holiday” thing. But if I come back with some of those plans, letters, lists and documents ready to go, I suspect I’ll class that as a successful holiday anyway…
Posted: Tue 26 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Cynicism, Geeky, Own Business, Work-related |
Every so often, I realise just how bad I can be at Maths. Today (and, in fairness, last night) were perfect examples of that.
I’ve been writing the PHP to do a bundle of reports, and one of them involved figuring out the return-on-investment (ROI) for a given contract. It’s a simple percentage, yet could I get it right first time? Could I knickers. OK, some of the problems were with getting the information out of the database in the first place as well, but all the same, it led to me bashing my head into the desk for a good hour just on getting the sums right and then the percentages.
And the real bummer is that I’m still not convinced I’ve got it right…
Updated : Ah, got it sussed now, and all seems to be working fine. Funny how the simple things are always the hardest to fix, isn’t it?
Posted: Sun 24 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Animals, Domestic, Own Business, Work-related |
All this week, Psycho Cat has been most annoyed by the continuation of the building work. Obviously it’s all disturbing his precious beauty sleep (or at least some of the essential 20 hours a day he seems to spend sleeping) and so he’s going to take it out on anyone/anything that comes close. Or – if that doesn’t work – just be bloody annoying.
His main traits so far have been:
- Jumping up to sit on the bookcase shelves (just where my wireless router is – the little fucker’ll be glowing before long) and then swiping at anything that goes past.
- Taking it out on Hound, who is currently cowering every time he comes close
- Annoying Hound by stomping in to the living room (usually Hound’s “territory”) to come and sit on/near us in the evening – and then going back to the previous option
- If no-one’s in the living room, showing his displeasure by taking a crap on one of the sofa covers
- Sitting on one of the kitchen worktops, glowering at anyone who comes in
or
- Annoying me, by coming and sitting either on the keyboard I’m attempting to use, attacking my hand as it operates the mouse, or sitting in front of the monitor.
Yesterday though, was the grand finale. Not content with those, he did this…
He’s even snoring, for fuck’s sake…
Posted: Fri 1 February, 2008 | Author: Lyle | Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Getting Organised, Own Business, Work-related |
When I said a few weeks back that I’d submitted by tax return by post, recorded delivery so that I knew it’d got there, a ouple of people wondered why I didn’t use the online sstem for submitting it.
There’s a number of reasons for it, although this story on the BBC about it having crashed wasn’t in that list ’til today.
Mainly, I like cast-iron proof that it’s been received by HMCE. I’ve been bitten before by “Well, just because you submitted it online doesn’t mean we received it”, and also by “If we send something out to you, we assume you’ve received it – but that doesn’t work the same way when you send something to us”. In my experience, the cunts at HMCE will lose tax returns just for fun. I don’t know what systems they’ve got there, but it’s all too easy for them to lose information. I prefer to make sure they at least have to lose hard-copy, rather than something that can be killed by just the click of a mouse. Yeah, I’m cynical – but then, I’ve been on the receiving end of some seriously shit service at the hands of HMCE, so it’s understandable.
Secondly, I just don’t trust a system that’s a) been written by shyster motherfuckers like Capita and EDS (and that is renowned for being a sack of shit) and b) that’s not secure enough for royalty, MPs or celebrities. Oh, it’s secure enough for Joe Public of course – just not for special people. So no, I don’t trust the system at all.
Hell, the system isn’t even stable enough to handle the load when lots of people submit their forms just in time for the deadline.
So I’ll stick with submitting my forms by post, thanks. I might let the accountant do it online – so lng as I get a full hard-copy of it as well, for my records and verificatiion.
